Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.

No one in the United States has the right to own millions of acres of American land, I don't care how they came by it.

I never go to weddings. Waste of time. Person can get married a dozen times. Lots of folks do. Family like ours, know everybody in the state of Texas and around outside, why, you could spend your life going to weddings. But a funeral, that's different. You only die once.

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

Writing, to be memorable, must be done in a state of impassioned serenity.

America -- rather, the United States -- seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, over-friendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The chuckle among the nations of the world.

No woman ought to pretend she's intelligent. And if she is she ought to have the intelligence to pretend she isn't.